


Lambs for Earth and Sun

by wolftraptobaltimore (ogidni)



Series: Carnal Knowledge [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Dubcon-I don't know...abortive sex, Established Relationship, Fighting over Will, Fucking in prison, Jealousy, M/M, Profuse dirty talk, Questionable psychological ethics, Will is a bad cook
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-25 04:31:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9802724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogidni/pseuds/wolftraptobaltimore
Summary: “You’ve got quite a feisty lover,” Matthew chuckled and folded his hands behind his head. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”“I believe you had him first,” Hannibal said crisply. A strange mischief sparkled in his eyes; inside he felt electrified, governed not by his cool, rational mind, but by that animal part of him that reveled in pain, even his own.---Hannibal finds out Will had a sexual encounter with Matthew Brown while imprisoned, and can't get the thought out of his mind. It wasn't infidelity, exactly, but that doesn't mean Brown can live.





	1. alpha

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, this is the second in a series. It follows after Kigakan, but can be read as a standalone too. Happy reading :)

It had taken a lot of reprogramming for Will to warm up to the idea of sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

 

He had developed a schedule that fit in with his working life, and had never had a reason to depart from it even when he could. Moreover, it had become a custom for him through the years to wake up even earlier on weekends to catch the early morning bite of summer fishing.

 

On top of that, he had worried about the dogs and leaving them locked in the house for twelve hours or more at a time. The benefit of living in the woods was that they were able to spend long periods of time romping around Will’s open property. Lately, Will had been spending inordinate amounts of time in Baltimore. At first, he would wake up early, sometimes before the sun rose, and make the drive back to Wolf Trap unimpeded by traffic. He did his best not to wake Hannibal.

 

This worked through most of winter until Hannibal chastised him for the behavior. Will had to admit, it was piss poor manners to cut and run the morning after.

 

Through most of spring, they embarked on something like a timeshare. They spent roughly half of their intimate nights at Hannibal’s home in Baltimore and the rest in Wolf Trap. Will had had to repair his heater. He had been sleeping on the pull-out bed in his living room because of its proximity to the fireplace. There was no reason to fix the heater until it became clear to him that he could not ask Hannibal to fuck, sleep, and relax on the same piece of furniture in the middle of a den full of dogs. Hannibal had assured him that he would not mind making love to Will in front of open windows, but Will realized on his own that this would not be a long-term solution.

 

Once the heater was fixed, they moved back up to Will’s bedroom like civilized people. Hannibal stocked Will’s cupboards and refrigerator with more sensible food staples than cans of chili con carne, frozen hamburger patties, and cornflakes. He cooked simpler meals, but they were far more involved than anything Will cared to make on his own.

 

In the bathroom, Hannibal insisted that there was no such thing as an all-in-one soap for human bodies which complicated Will’s morning showers by replacing his one bottle with three separate ones. Will didn’t mind when his aftershave was replaced behind the mirrored panel of his medicine cabinet, and he was touched by the appearance of a tasteful bottle of cologne on his dresser.

 

On weeknights, if they were in Baltimore, Hannibal promised to send Will home before it got too late into the evening, but on weekends, Will had finally learned to sleep in.

 

He had finally learned to enjoy the pleasures of waking up to the smell of frying sausage with its heavy aroma of fennel and thyme. When he opened his eyes, he found himself alone in bed, and although he distinctly remembered falling asleep with the sheets tangled messily around him, they were now pulled neatly up over his shoulders. Will stretched and felt under the sheets on Hannibal’s side. His hand ran over a fading patch of warmth only in the very center. Hannibal must have been gone for at least an hour.

 

When Will sat up, he saw a robe laid out with a set of pajamas on top of the teal bench at the foot of the bed. He pulled the pants on without a clean pair of underwear to change into and left the shirt on the bench before wrapping the robe around him and sniffing fondly at the collar.

 

“Good morning,” Will greeted as he made his way, wincing, into the kitchen. His bare feet remained unprotected from the cold of the tile, but the sound of his approaching was nearly silent under the ambient hiss of cooking food and chirping birds.

 

He sidled up to Hannibal, kissed the side of his morning stubbled jaw, and slipped his hands down the front of Hannibal’s pants from behind. It was temptingly easy when Hannibal was in sleep pants instead of his usual fitted slacks.

 

Hannibal gave a low, appreciative purr.

 

“Good morning, Will.” His lips found Will’s and he kissed him over his shoulder, still agitating the cast iron skillet with one gloved hand. “Did you sleep well?”

 

Remnants of Will now dotted Hannibal’s home in discreet ways that nonetheless called out to him, coy. The iron cast of a bull elk he had once featured in his study had been moved to his bedroom, and the indignity of canned beer had been grudgingly accepted by the otherwise stately makeup of his refrigerator. Hannibal had taken to ordering cases of Abita for him; his brew was better, he thought, but there was no competing with nostalgia for the south.

 

Hannibal turned, leaving the pan to the flame for a moment. He beheld Will in his early morning splendor, hair in wild disarray and eyes hazy with sleep, but peaceful, gentle.

 

“You had mentioned _red-eye gravy,_ hm? Coffee and chicory…I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“I do occasionally like to step out of my comfort zone, you know,” Will smiled lazily and retracted his hands from Hannibal’s pants before softly patting the material back into place. “It’s off brand for me, but I think this works better when you do things your way, and I do things mine,” the smell of coffee led Will over to the opposite counter, and away from Hannibal at the burner. He pulled three mugs from the overhead cabinets and set them down.

 

“How much coffee should I set aside for your experiment?” Will held the carafe of coffee Hannibal had already prepared up for clarification.

 

“Only enough to deglaze the pan,” Hannibal answered, “say, a half-pint or so.”

 

His voice was raspy and rough in the morning, a breed apart from the smooth, therapeutic tone he usually began to deploy somewhere around ten. Will had grown to relish it, their private language.

 

They fell into an easy rhythm, Will the sporadic sous chef following Hannibal’s lead. The woody scent of chicory coffee took him back to cool, wet mornings in New Orleans, watching the sunrise break over the gleaming Mississippi. Things were better now.

 

They sat down to eat.

 

“Should we discuss our testimony?” Hannibal asked lightly. It was his habit to be blunt but pleasant when there was no delicate way of putting something, with perjury as a case in point.

 

Will swallowed slowly. Somehow he had forgotten that today was the day.

 

“I think we’ve been over it enough,” he replied.

 

It had taken some time for the authorities to conduct their investigation; Chilton had spent some time in a coma following his unfortunate encounter with Lass, and there were pieces to put together once he awoke. Now that the time had come for his trial, and Hannibal and Will had each been called to testify on behalf of the prosecution: Will as a witness, and Hannibal as an expert. The star witness, of course, was Miriam herself; still the doctor had been fastidious in aligning their accounts. Will didn’t have any doubt Chilton would be found guilty of the Chesapeake murders and he didn’t feel especially troubled by it, but dwelling on the crimes made him uneasy, and he wanted to put the whole matter behind them as soon as possible.

 

Will had spoken with Miriam after he was released from the BSHCI and before she had shot Chilton. She had been terrified. Terrified enough to have her memory altered through Hannibal’s therapy. He knew what that was like; to be in front of the flashing lights with your mind opened. So terrified, it was imperative for her to shoot Chilton through the glass. Will had no fond feelings for Frederick Chilton, and knew from personal experience that the inmates of the BSHCI were much better off under Alana Bloom’s care. Still, it gave Will the feeling of someone knowingly doing the wrong thing.

 

Despite himself he found his appetite fading.

 

“Is everything alright, Will?”

 

“Mmhm.”

 

Hannibal paused. “Very good.”

 

\---

 

Will stepped down from the stand feeling weak and dizzy; he took the bailiff’s proffered arm and, steeling himself for only a moment, made his way down the marble aisle and out of the Baltimore courthouse. It was a cool day with a wet edge; no rain had fallen but rivulets of dew streamed down all the petals and leaves, newly unfurled. He thought maybe he shouldn’t have worn his heavier coat, and that was why he felt so out of sorts; it was the heat, he thought, just claustrophobia. He took refuge in a little cafe down the street from court.

 

A waitress brought him tea. He warmed his hands on the ceramic mug and ordered something bland to eat, some porridge or other. He was spooning sugar into it from a chipped glass dish when Jack sat down frankly across from him.

 

“You look shook up.”

 

“Afternoon, Jack.”

 

“You done good back there,” Jack said. “I know it can’t be easy. You probably knew him better than any of us, surprised by what he really turned out to be.”

 

Will quietly sipped his tea. He was not at all surprised by what Frederick Chilton turned out to be. Chilton was the kind of man who was destined to be someone’s patsy at least once in his life, if not more than once. Will was also not particularly surprised by who the Chesapeake Ripper had turned out to be or his own ability to be unbothered by the knowledge. What he was surprised about was the flowing world and liminal space that existed just beneath the surface of this knowledge. It was the space where he and Hannibal lived, loved, and existed.

 

“Nobody saw it,” Jack went on, “don’t take this all on yourself.”

 

“I’ll be fine, Jack. I’m just...tired.”

 

“You having trouble sleeping again, Will?”

 

“No, no, it’s not that. I’m fine, really. I was up late last night, that’s all.”

 

“ _Oh_.”

 

Will’s attention snapped up when he realized what Jack had deduced, but he pressed his lips together in a firm white line and didn’t pursue the subject further. Jack, meanwhile, caught the waitress's attention and placed an order for coffee and eggs.

 

“Are you...taking any time off?” Will ventured over a spoonful of porridge, not bothering to look up. Steam had fogged his glasses, anyhow.

 

“Huh?”

 

“From work, now that the Ripper case is finally closed. It was a big part of your life for a long time, Jack.”

 

“Ha. Nope, no...There’s always another one. The job’s never done. Speaking of, you’ll be testifying at Brown’s trial, right?”

 

Will paused.

 

“I don’t -- maybe.”

 

“Haven’t heard from the ADA yet?”

 

He had, of course. But something tightened in him at the thought of testifying against Matthew.

 

“Will.” Jack leaned across the table, over his plate of eggs. “You weren’t playing with a full deck back then. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

 

“If I’m not too hard on myself, and you aren’t too hard on me, who will be?” Will used a tight smile to hide the actual truth in his words. He met Jack’s eyes across the table with a learned steadiness he had gained through hours long games of psychological chicken with Hannibal. When Jack’s eyes crinkled at the edges and he began to dig into his breakfast with a renewed appetite, Will felt it was safe to break the gaze.

 

“That’s the million dollar question I ask myself everyday, Will,” Jack cleared his throat, obviously more concerned about the Brown trial than he initially let on. He waved the waitress over and ordered a stack of strawberry pancakes as well, explaining to her that they looked so good he couldn’t resist. “Do you want something else, Will? You should get a little more.”

 

Jack had a raised brow look on his face, letting Will know that this was a test.

 

“If you want to talk more, Jack, you don’t have to hide it in a mountain of food. I’m fine,” Will waved the waitress away and took another sip of his tea. “So what is it you want to discuss?”

 

“Days spent in court don’t sit too well with you, I’ve noticed,” Jack finally tended to his coffee, adding what he deemed to be a satisfactory amount of sugar. “You worried about the next trial?” He watched Will intently, as if he expected he already knew what he would see when Will responded.

 

“I spent weeks in court for my own trial, Jack. Or are you forgetting how unpleasant court can be for me?” Will cupped his hands around his lukewarm cup and stared into the bottom at the specks of tea leaves that had escaped from the tea bag.

 

“That’s exactly the kind of answer you should avoid giving,” Will could tell that Jack had leaned back in the booth to sigh and consider how he could best coach Will to a passing form of normalcy.

 

Will was annoyed, but somewhat touched, by Jack’s concern. It came from a good place and was more than Will deserved.

 

When Jack’s pancakes arrived, he seemed better prepared to engage with Will again.

 

“I was there,” Jack began. He kept his eyes trained on his food, “Feelings can complicate things. It was apparent Brown’s feelings for you, misguided as they were, encouraged him to act a certain way. Your feelings for Hannibal…”

 

“Encouraged me to act a certain way?” It seemed the closest Jack would get to admitting what he knew about Hannibal and Will.

 

“What I’m saying, is that Matthew Brown had an obsession with you that was based on the false belief that you were the Chesapeake Ripper. He was deluded, Will, and it’s not hard to believe that Brown’s attack on Dr. Lecter might have been motivated by a subconscious jealousy. Lecter visited you in prison and Brown was privy to every conversation you had.” As a closing argument, Jack concluded: “I told you: feelings can complicate things. In this case, they might uncomplicate them too.”

 

\---

 

There was a commotion outside Hannibal’s Baltimore manor when Will pulled up the street. He parked his car in front of a bank of mailboxes, instead of in the drive like he would normally, and laid his hand on his side arm as he exited from the driver’s side. He jogged stealthily up to the steps only to see the vehicle out front was a moving van, not an ambulance, and the swarm of strangers busying themselves at the door were movers, not police. A sigh unclenched his chest, and he waved to Hannibal through the fray.

 

“Will,” Hannibal greeted him, off-handedly directing a pair of the workers as they rolled out a long sheath of butcher’s paper over his foyer rug, “do come in.”

 

Will squeezed around a ladder leaning in the doorframe and took off his shoes to match his host.

 

“What’s all this?” he gestured around.

 

“A painting.”

 

“New?”

 

“Old, quite old. Not new to my possession, either. It was on loan to a museum.”

 

A quartet of workers painstakingly eased a cloth-wrapped canvas through Hannibal’s doorway as he stood and directed like an orchestra conductor. Will watched, amused with Hannibal’s focus, and followed curiously as he guided the movers into his sitting room to place the painting back in its appointed place on the wall.

 

When the cloth fell away the painting seemed almost to glow in the late afternoon light: A tall, slender saint bound to a tree, arrows piercing his smooth body. He seemed burnished gold in the fading sun, and Hannibal’s eyes fixed on him with amorous intensity.

 

“Good to have you back,” he said to himself, triumphant.

 

Will balked at the familiar face that emerged from behind its wrappings. Surely this was some sort of elaborate prank that Hannibal had devised, but who would loan the man a nearly priceless work of art for the sake of a joke? Moreover, it would explain why Hannibal had gone to the museum opening in the first place and been so openly enamored with the work.

 

“Of course you would own a Botticelli painting, you --” Will’s instinct was to call him a bastard, but somehow it seemed more profane under the patient eyes of a saint.

 

“I simply couldn’t resist him,” Hannibal admitted, though he didn’t even attempt to feign sheepishness. “I couldn’t stand the thought of him belonging to anyone else.”

 

“How long...” Will swallowed thickly as his throat became suddenly dry, “...have you had him?”

 

“Four years now,” he answered smoothly, “since a chance trip to Florence. Of course, I’ve wanted him longer than that. Curious, how one can have something and still want it.”

 

“You’ve moved him. I’ve been in this room before, but I’d never seen the painting before the gallery.”

 

“He was on tour last year,” Hannibal said, pleased that Will had adopted the pronoun. “A museum in the district, and then in Baltimore. I missed him terribly.”

 

 _Tour_ ...suddenly Will remembered the gazes he had suffered during the museum exhibition. Botticelli’s _Saint Sebastian_ was a high-profile piece of art. Those within the fine arts community of Baltimore would know that Hannibal was the painting’s owner. And as much as Will was loathe to admit it, there were a fair number of similarities between himself and the icon. Hannibal’s attendance at the exhibition opening with a man who looked like the one in his painting — it broadcasted a strong message.

 

The tops of Will’s cheeks pinkened and he turned to make sure the workers were gone, knowing that they would have most likely arrived at a similar conclusion had they not departed as soon as they finished their job.

 

“Well then,” Hannibal said at last, once the workers had shown themselves out and he stood alone with Will under the gaze of Saint Sebastian. “You seem troubled, Will.”

 

“You took me to an exhibit opening for your own painting,” Will said flatly, avoiding the matter. “Hannibal, probably _everybody_ there thought we were --”

 

“--Aren’t we?”

 

“We weren’t then.”

 

“But we are now.”

 

“But if people thought -- right then -- that wasn’t true.”

 

“But if they still think so now, it is. They were mistaken, but only for a moment.”

 

Hannibal smiled. Something was the matter, of course, but if Will wasn’t interested in pursuing it, he had a mind to let it rest: It would come out eventually, anyhow. Instead of interrogating him further he crossed the distance between them and laid a hand on Will’s waist, leaning near to taste his breath before capturing his lips.

 

When Will returned the kiss, it was distracted. The contact was fleeting, and he was much more interested in the hand at his waist for the comfort that it provided. His own hand traveled downwards and rested over Hannibal’s. He rubbed the back of it with his thumb and frowned.

 

“I spoke with Jack after the trial.”

 

“Oh?” Hannibal carded his opposite fingers through Will’s hair, soothing. “Did he bear bad news?”

 

“Less bad news and more...unfortunate inevitability. They’ve finally set a date for Matthew Brown’s trial. They’ve been holding back to keep pace with Frederick’s trial, but I imagine they’ll start proceedings. You’ve been contacted, haven’t you?”

 

“Mm,” Hannibal affirmed. Touching Will had aroused him; he never had been a man of modest or restrained appetites. His lips traced Will’s jaw and he scattered kisses along his neck, idly plucking at his buttons. “Is it troubling you, dear?”

 

Will’s first instinct was to insist on locking the front door, but he quickly reasoned that it was exceedingly unlikely that if anyone even did come to Hannibal’s front door right now that they would enter without being invited in.

 

“Jack is -- I hadn’t thought much of it. Maybe I’m unprepared…” Hannibal had unbuttoned Will’s shirt halfway and was gently prodding a nipple, watching it tighten into a firm nub.

 

“Unprepared?” he seemed to scoff. “Tell the truth, Will. He tried to kill me. This is one of those rare cases wherein the truth exonerates you…”

 

“You and I both know why he tried to kill you. I think --” Will’s lips pursed and his brow furrowed in thought, “-- I doubt he’ll say I told him to.” Will leaned back and swallowed thickly, “What will you say?”

 

A hot current of irritation rose in Hannibal’s blood. His fingers tightened around Will’s shirt collar, now loosened, and he locked eyes with him.

 

“That he is a dangerous madman who forged a job application as a nurse and attempted to take my life. The _truth,_ Will, as I said.”

 

“A version of the truth…” this was the thing that had been bothering Will ever since he had first listened to the message from the ADA telling him when he should expect to appear in court. The man had joked that Will should wear his best suit, but judging by the look in Hannibal’s eyes, it would be best to dress as plainly as possible.

  
“That’s all we ever have,” Hannibal hummed, off-handedly, Will thought, as though placating an contrary student. Will decided not to pursue it, at least for now. Hannibal was working his way down Will’s naked torso with a sequence of soft kisses, making it hard to think.


	2. beta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal has his suspicions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember to check us out on tumblr! That's where we take prompt suggestions -winkwinknudgenudge-
> 
> wolftraptobaltimore.tumblr.com

Will knew Matthew had come for his reward when he didn’t ask him to stand and be handcuffed prior to unlocking his cell door. That would have been procedural and formal; this was neither. Matthew let himself in quietly, and deposited his handful of keys in one of his coat pockets. Under his arm he carried some thick parcel wrapped in hospital linen.

 

“It’s late,” Will said groggily.

 

“Graveyard shift, Mister Graham. But I’ve been up all night.”

 

“Doing anything interesting?” Will asked.

 

“Mmm-hmm. Spending the evening with your Judas. Did you know he swims around ten-pm on Thursday nights?”

 

“I didn’t know that. I wasn’t interested in Hannibal Lecter until he imprisoned me.” Will and Hannibal had come such a long way from the first morning they shared breakfast and Will had voiced his disinterest. Now that he was locked up in a fairly solitary environment, he had nothing but time to think about Hannibal.

 

“Knowledge is power, Mister Graham.”

 

“Yes, it is.”

 

 _He swims,_ Will thought. _How quaint._ Were there fashionable swimsuits? What did a man of such distinction put on to go into the water? And how did his body look underneath those finely tailored suits? And what stroke did he prefer, when he went swimming?

 

 _Swimming._ Will heard it pulse like an echo; his mind was swimming, and the sensation felt like the sound of the word. His thoughts were indistinct and slithered to and fro, knitting together, pulling apart. He was trying to think of anything but the fact that Hannibal would soon die.

 

“Something could go wrong,” Matthew said, peering out of the cell bars with curious intensity.

 

“Matthew, you’re going to have to be very, very careful.”

 

A faux gasp. “Mister Graham, are you _worried_ about me?” Expectation glimmered in his eyes, blue and manic. Will sat up in his cot: This, he thought, must be his cue.

 

“I -- I don’t want you to get hurt.” The words came awkwardly, as though he were mouthing sounds from a foreign language.

 

Matthew handed over the parcel he had smuggled in. Will unwrapped it promptly: He had brought a pillow and blanket from the outside, each of them substantial and thick, not threadbare and stiff like the standard-issue prison linens.

 

Will looked up at him blankly, and then managed a small, grateful smile.

 

“It’s been a while…” he said.

 

“Don’t worry,” Matthew hushed him, “I don’t want _you_ to get hurt.”

 

Will moved back on his bed, flattening against the concrete wall to make space. He began to unsnap the closures of his prison jumpsuit, noting to himself that he smelled of peroxide and plain soap, medicinal. His skin felt dry and inelastic like paper.

 

Matthew watched him with unveiled interest, and shrugged out of his coat. A few moments later, his shirt followed, and he knelt on the edge of the metal cot with his hands on the mattress. Will’s hands settled on Matthew’s waist -- narrow, too narrow.

 

“It’ll be better when you’re out,” he said, almost apologetic.

 

Will nodded. “When _we’re_ out,” he corrected him, suppressing nausea.

 

Matthew turned his head and slotted his lips against Will’s. He was tentative, tender; Will had expected a much more brutal onslaught, but the tongue sliding against his felt almost shy. He wrapped his arms around Matthew’s flexing shoulders and drew him in spreading his knees apart in invitation.

 

From Matthew’s shoulders, Will’s hands traveled back to the front and down Matthew’s chest which was smooth when it should not be. There was a flash of Hannibal in Matthew’s place -- a modest amount of soft, dark hair brushed over pecs and trailing down the center of the torso to…

 

The first spark of arousal made itself known in the tension between Will’s shoulders. Matthew massaged the base of his neck attentively, and the room was suddenly cool again.

 

“Relax…shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, hush…I‘ll make you feel better, Mister Graham,” the contents of Will’s stomach seemed to flip and swirl without him even moving. _Swimming_.

 

Will caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, but Matthew’s hands were parting the edges of his jumpsuit more insistently, palming reverently at the front of Will’s underwear.

 

“ _You’re a big boy, hmmm?_ ” This, Will heard in stereo with two voices.

 

His breathing picked up, and it was all he could hear anymore like the crashing static echoed from the depths of a conch shell. The sound was loud, obnoxious, and put on...a performance with his dick firming up in Matthew’s grip.

 

Will’s vision swam in and out of focus. He saw kaleidoscopic patterns of the scene between his legs, and when the images bounced back together into a clearer form, he saw a pair of stag’s horns dripping black out of the far corner’s darkness -- a creature hunched and heaving. His breathing matched the undulations of the dark creature’s body. When he blinked, it had closed half the distance across Will’s cell and now stood straight behind Matthew Brown, who seemed unaware of the extra pair of eyes in the room.

 

The creature cocked its head to the side and regarded Will with that unfeeling gaze. Will blinked again and the creature had oil-slick shining fingers curved around Matthew Brown’s throat as the night-nurse-cum-serial-killer-hopeful sheathed himself inside of Will’s body.

 

As if it weren’t apparent, Will announced to the creature, “I fucked him.”

 

Will’s whole body felt cold with pricks of pins and needles as he startled awake.

 

He scrubbed his hands over his face, digging blunt nails into his beard as he drew them away. He sucked in shaking breaths which never seemed to fill his lungs.

 

Eventually he could smell some distant sweetness — bread baking, he realized; Hannibal wasn’t beside him, but he had been. The world filtered back to him in pieces: the glittering sun streaming in through his window, the sound of birds outside, the smell of bread, the empty spot next to him where he had fallen asleep in his lover’s arms.

 

Hannibal. Not Matthew.

 

The encounter with Matthew was singular; just that once, and never again. Surely Matthew had planned on further amours between them, but he hadn’t ever had the chance, and Will was grateful for it now. It had been the product of unfortunate circumstances in dark times, born of desperation and terror. He didn’t regret it, not exactly, he knew he had done what he had to; but he preferred not to reflect on it.

 

Winston nudged his hand.

 

“Morning, boy.”

 

A soft whine.

 

“I’m okay,” Will assured him, sitting up with a half-wince. Hannibal sometimes left him sore, but never damaged. He always checked after their lovemaking to see that Will wasn’t torn or abraded.

 

He threw his legs over the side of the bed and stepped clumsily into a pair of boxers, scratching at Winston’s scruff as the dog followed him into the kitchen. Hannibal sat at the breakfast table with a newspaper, reading idly as Bailey nudged at his knee, grateful for the steady hand that carded through her fur.

 

“Good morning,” Hannibal greeted warmly, glancing up from his reading.

 

“Morning,” Will answered, his residual anxiety giving way to a sleepy smile. He scratched the little line of hair trailing upward to his navel. “What’s cooking?”

 

“Fig and almond bostock,” Hannibal returned simply, as though Will had any notion of what that meant. After a beat of silence he clarified: “Brioche with frangipane, figs and caramelized almonds.”

 

“Mm. You like figs, don’t you?”

 

“What’s not to like?” Hannibal put aside the paper as Will sat, and regarded him over a mug of coffee. “Did you sleep well?”

 

“Yeah,” Will lied.

 

To which Hannibal didn’t respond.

 

\---

 

A lull at work made the days feel twelve hours long. Will left a little early, accordingly, with the bright sun still gleaming over Quantico. The attorneys had given their closing arguments in Chilton’s trial earlier that day, and according to Jack, the prosecutors were confident.

 

Will still felt smothered by his dream. On more than one occasion since he had caught the scent of prison disinfectant clinging to his clothes, and he had spared a few extra moments in the shower reminding himself that he was alone, he had his privacy, that the whole ordeal was over.

 

And that he had fucked Matthew Brown. That thought occurred to him, too. He didn’t feel compelled to fantasize about it, but he did wonder if he should warn Hannibal before the trial commenced, in case Brown said something untoward that gave the game away. Like any orphaned boy, Hannibal was madly sensitive to inklings of abandonment, and prone to misconstruing the vicissitudes of his complex relationships as outright betrayal.

 

But he would have to be careful. For all his placid impassivity, Hannibal was hot-blooded, and Will knew him to be unrestrained in love and war.

 

He drove to Baltimore with the car windows half-down, dazed by the scent of fertile earth.

 

\---

 

Hannibal was showing a patient out just as Will arrived, and he saw the authentic pleasure crest under the mask of irenic toleration he wore for his clients.

 

“Will,” he greeted, inviting him into the study, “cutting out a bit early on account of the fine weather?”

 

“Just couldn’t stay inside,” he admitted.

 

“Then let’s go out.”

 

The property at the rear of Hannibal’s estate was only as vast as suburbia allowed, but he had cultivated the feel of an English garden with carefully placed hedges and blossoming trees.

 

At the foot of the stone bench Hannibal led him to was a tangle of wiry vines and soft, broad leaves. Will leaned down absently to run his fingers over a little red berry suspended like a lantern over the ground.

 

“Wild strawberries,” Hannibal informed him absently.

 

“Do you use these when you cook?”

 

“No,” Hannibal said, “it wouldn’t be safe. The soil here is thick with lead. The berries absorb it as they grow.”

 

“Then your herb garden inside —”

 

“Is stocked with virgin soil.”

 

Will’s jaw snapped shut and he felt chilled, even as Hannibal reclined in the sunshine, eyes lidded in bliss.

 

“Do you wanna fuck?”

 

Hannibal’s gaze widened and fixed on him immediately.

 

“I mean — if you don’t have another patient, or something?”

 

“Not until four,” Hannibal murmured, glancing at the face of his watch. It caught the glare of the sun and reflected a disk of light across his cheek. “Will?”

 

“That’s enough time.”

 

To spare himself the embarrassment of Hannibal’s puzzled gaze Will stood up and set off for the house.

 

\---

 

Sweat slicked Will’s inner thigh as it slid along Hannibal’s flank. His fingers smoothed over the other’s nape as he thrust into him, haloed in afternoon sunlight.

 

“Verdict is — s’posed to — come down — today,” Will grunted between strokes.

 

“Chilton,” Hannibal clarified.

 

“Y-yeah…”

 

“Good.” Dwelling on the trial hadn’t been good for Will so far; Hannibal was eager to put it behind them both, and pleased, of course, with the neat execution of his plan.

 

“Then,” Will groaned, panting for a moment before going on: “Brown’s trial starts.”

 

“Let it _go,_ Will,” Hannibal admonished him. He paused in his thrusting, pushing up to look down into Will’s glassy eyes. “Is there something you’d like to talk about?”

 

Will had the sheepish feeling that he had interrupted Hannibal during something important, peeving him; he felt as though he had bothered him in the middle of his reading.

 

“Sorry,” Will took a few calming breaths and scratched placatingly beneath Hannibal’s chin, “I was -- rambling…” Hannibal was right. There was no need to hold onto the agonizing anxiety of courtroom travails. He smiled tiredly at Hannibal and whispered, “thanks,” as he pulled Hannibal down for a kiss. The weight of Hannibal’s body was familiar and grounding.

 

“It’s alright, Will,” Hannibal hummed, allowing Will to pull him back in.

 

\---

 

Hannibal opened the two tall windows in his study before his next appointment in part because it had grown still and close in the room, and in part because he knew he still smelled of sex. He had showered and changed, of course, but the scent clung to his hair, his nails, his lips. It may have just been Will, he thought; after all they had showered together, and Will had kissed him goodbye. It was hard, anymore, to distinguish between the scent of sex and the scent of Will.

 

Diaphanous curtains fluttered and flowed in the spring wind. Hannibal welcomed Mrs. Curtis in when she arrived, inviting her to sit with the same generous sweep of his arm he offered all his clients, and then took his place across from her.

 

She wore an eye patch today. She had since _the incident,_ her term for the car accident that had first placed her in Hannibal’s care over a year ago. She had perhaps never been an especially beautiful woman, but she had been perfectly presentable; now she was convinced of her ugliness thanks to her injuries. The damage to her self-esteem had made her alternately hostile and diffident at work, and her husband, a nervous financier with his hands in several overseas real estate concerns, had been less than supportive.

 

“How have you been since we last talked, Elise?”

 

Immediate tears. Hannibal sat up and offered the box of tissues he kept on his desk for weepy patients, then leaned back, noting her condition in his notebook.

 

“Rick finally just said he’s cheating,” she managed, “he just admitted it. I was asking him and I asked and asked and he just said, yeah, okay. I did. So what? But,” she sobbed for a moment before adding: “b-but he said he doesn’t want a divorce, he just...he wants to make it work.”

 

“Is that what you want?”

 

Hannibal had a way of managing himself as though he were alert when he was deep in thought. It was, in his estimation, one of the many benefits of having a well-established person suit. Sometimes the suit could simply wear itself while he was miles away.

 

What was he to make of Will’s ruminations on Brown during their lovemaking? And even then he knew he was willfully deceiving himself: Will had been acting strangely, especially about matters of sex and trials, long before today’s rude interruption.

 

 _Coitus interruptus,_ he thought, also _pulling-out,_ also _Onanism,_ also _rejected sexual intercourse,_ the medical term. It was the worst of them all in his opinion, and of course the most accurate. If he couldn’t ejaculate inside his partner he couldn’t see what the value in the whole enterprise was. He wondered if, when he had come deep in Will’s body earlier that afternoon, it had been his semen or Brown’s that Will felt warming his depths.  

 

His eyes fixed on the place the bronze sculpture of the bull elk had been, before Will had moved it. During an elk’s annual rut, it wasn’t at all uncommon for even the stateliest and most majestic of bulls to be replaced by wiley young upstarts…

 

“She’s a hairdresser,” Elise was saying, “So I asked if that was it, if it was that kind of thing, he just...that they got to talking, and they just...I guess they connected…”

 

“Would it be worse if they had connected in that way, as opposed to a strictly physical way?” Hannibal asked gently.

 

“If they were in love?” she asked.

 

Somehow the question startled him, like a vase tipping off a ledge. Hannibal straightened subtly in his chair.

 

“Would you feel worse if they were in love?” he repeated, and she seemed confused; but then again, he was asking himself.

 

“I...that would be a lot worse,” she said, dissolving again to tears.

 

 _It would be,_ Hannibal agreed silently.

 

After Brown had been taken into custody he had rarely thought of him. Up until Will’s latest preoccupation, Brown had seemed to him a token of his success: Will had sent him to kill him, and he had instead incapacitated his lover’s would-be agent. There was a double-meaning in it; first, that Brown was no match for himself either as a killer or a lover, and second, that if Will really had business with Hannibal, he would have to conduct it himself. That he had eventually chosen sex as a resolution to their game rather than death was only a happy accident.

 

To his surprise, a warm flush of anger blossomed in him at the memory of Will saying that name during their lovemaking.

 

Brown had loved Will, yes. Hannibal himself had said as much. But he had taken for granted that Will was troubled by his affections and never returned them.

 

Now he wasn’t sure.

 

\---

 

In the evening the air cooled and the wind stirred the curtains and kissed dew onto the windowpanes.

 

Hannibal had long ago placed his jacket on the back of his study chair. It had begun to make him feel stiff and restrained during his long afternoon sessions, with the late-day sun pouring in like honey.

 

Now it was night. His iPad had alerted him when the Washington Post reported Chilton’s verdict had been handed down: guilty, of course. The news report had remarked that the jury did not recommend the death penalty or incarceration in a general penitentiary, but rather suggested he be held for the remainder of his days in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

 

In a better mood Hannibal would’ve found it very fitting to imagine Chilton locked away in the prison he made himself.

  
And though it gave him no satisfaction to ponder it, he did decide, as he readied himself for bed, that he would visit BSHCI sometime soon, though not to see dear Frederick.


	3. gamma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will and Hannibal's tensions about Matthew Brown flare. Hannibal goes to the BSHCI to have a private face-to-face with Matthew Brown. *UPDATED TAGS*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: This is an AU that picks up in the middle of s2. Beverly is not dead. Will and Hannibal are hooking up - therefore the whole Will/Margot thing doesn't happen, but Alana and Margot still end up together.
> 
> Confession time, guys. I, W(olf Trap), know absolutely nothing about wine because I grew up in a dry house and I just never took to drinking much on my own. B(altimore) does her best to correct my abysmal wine-related screw ups in our writing, but there may be some that slip by her. I just want you to know, that anything that comes off as ill-mannered or unsophisticated is all my fault. I'm a trash heap. Thanks for understanding.
> 
> On that note, thanks for the continued interest. Sorry this chapter took so long, but it's a tad longer than usual. We're in the process of balancing a few different fics.
> 
> Shout out to the Hannibal Cre-Ate-Ive on tumblr http://hannibalcreative.tumblr.com - couldn't quite rustle anything up for Madancy March, but we're looking forward to the Tristhad Fest coming this April! Trust that we will be cooking something up for you guys ;)
> 
> As always, we have so few followers on tumblr! If you love us here, please follow our tumblr. It's all Hannigram, all the time. Eventually we'll probably even start posting some tumblr-only stuff. SO GO FOLLOW! https://wolftraptobaltimore.tumblr.com
> 
> \- W

“I don’t know, Hannibal. I don’t know if...Ethically, it — it…” 

 

It was rude to notice, and so Hannibal didn’t mention it, but it did not slip his powers of observation that Alana had begun dressing better since she had taken up with Margot. Maybe it was all the Verger money, he reasoned, or maybe simply the benefit of better taste; whatever it was, she had traded in her jersey wrap dresses in passe patterns for flattering slacks and sharply tailored blazers. Presently she sat behind her desk in a floral brocade jacket over a simple silk blouse, her hair twisted up into a sleek bun.

 

She looked confident. Hannibal was proud to have introduced her to Miss Verger at one of his cocktail parties, if only for the wonders their romance had worked on her wardrobe.

 

“I understand it’s unorthodox,” Hannibal provided gently, “But the last time I saw Mr. Brown I was on the brink of death. By his hand, I might add. I would rather the second time I saw him  _ not  _ be in a crowded courtroom.” 

 

“I understand what...I see your concern,” Alana supplied slowly, “I just — Hannibal, what if he says something to his lawyer?”

 

“Says what?”

 

“Just that...Just that we’re, we’re unprofessional, that he hasn’t been adequately —”

 

“Alana, he is going to plead guilty. His attorney won’t be making any inquiries about the hospital.”

 

“You don’t —”

 

“—If they do, I will say I used my own credentials from Will’s incarceration and met with him without your knowledge.”

 

Alana pursed her lips and looked away. Clearly the thought had crossed her mind.

 

“Alana…”

 

“Let me think about it, Hannibal.”

 

He offered her one of those rare, subtle smiles, and she mustered the effort required not to look or flush. The last time he had looked at her like that, almost beatific…

 

They had never discussed their brief affair. Hannibal assumed Alana was embarrassed by it, having always imagined she was self-possessed enough to avoid becoming a whim. Or what she thought was a whim, anyway; she never had come upon the realization that she was actually an alibi. 

 

“Alright,” Hannibal returned gently, “thank you, Alana.”

 

\---

 

Will had never needed his copy of Hannibal’s key to let himself into the Baltimore manor before. Until this point, he had only ever needed to use it to lock the door behind himself when he was called to early morning crime scenes. 

 

However, after knocking thrice and ringing the doorbell twice with five minutes in between, it became clear that Hannibal was either in his office or elsewhere for the time being. The corners of Will’s mouth turned down, and he considered the crinkling plastic handles of the grocery bags clenched in his fists. He raised one arm and checked the time on his watch. Four-thirty...it was early and he hadn’t made an official announcement of his plans to visit.

 

On one hand, he could leave and go home to cook himself an inordinately fancy dinner -- perhaps share one of the filets between all of his dogs. On the other hand, there was nothing preventing him from cooking dinner as he had planned with Hannibal’s key shoved in the pocket of his jacket.

 

Will transferred both of the bags to one hand and fished for his keyring. His cheeks warmed brightly as he stepped across the threshold and heard the unanswered echo of his shoes in the foyer. There had been a time when the house would have felt unwelcoming to him without Hannibal present, but now he settled instinctively as he locked the deadbolt behind him and whisked into the kitchen.

 

When he set his bags on the marble counters, he imagined Hannibal chastising him for making a messy workplace. Hannibal, with his impeccable  _ mise-en-place _ , would surely cringe — might even be offended by Will’s slovenly cooking manners — but Hannibal was not there. It was satisfactory and frightening at the same time, like taking his father’s truck for a joyride down the lane when he was fourteen.

 

Will located the knives and cutting boards almost immediately since they were always out on the counters and Will could probably draw this kitchen from memory if his artistic skills weren’t so lacking. The pans were a little more difficult to find; he tried to use the oldest looking ones to avoid scratching their surfaces with his clumsy spatula work. 

 

Hannibal’s tablet sat charging in the dock by his home phone. Seeing the phone reminded Will to send Hannibal a short text to let him know Will had let himself inside. This accomplished, Will unseated the tablet from its dock and used it to find simple recipes to guide him.

 

He set the lobster tails on a pan covered in aluminum foil and snipped their shells to dress them. Then Will set the oven to preheat, but changed his mind as he worried the food would be too cold by the time Hannibal came back. 

 

With little else to do while he waited, Will tossed the empty bags and meat packaging in the trash. Usually, when he bought meat for himself, it came in styrofoam trays covered in plastic wrap. These meats had all been wrapped individually in wax-lined butcher paper and tied off with twine after he arbitrarily selected them from behind a meat counter at one of Hannibal’s preferred grocers.

 

Hannibal would not know of the mess, and Will slid the cast-iron skillet with his two filets and the pan with his trimmed lobster tails in the neatly organized fridge to wait for Hannibal’s return. In the meantime, he prepared the vegetables for a quick steam and sat at the counter to read a few articles Beverly had sent him from her thesis director’s archives on chemical aging.

 

When his phone buzzed in his pocket a half-hour later Will was glad to greet Hannibal. 

 

“Hey there.”

 

“Will,” came the voice from the other side, “how are you this evening?” 

 

“Doing good, just hungry. Where are you?”

 

A considered pause. Will leaned on the countertop, grinning to himself. 

 

“About forty-five minutes out. Is there anything you need?” 

 

“Just you.” 

 

Hannibal gave a soft sound of satisfaction and Will advised him to drive safely before hanging up to cook. He imagined Hannibal spreading his pants-suited legs in the leather seat of his Bentley, half-hard from the subtle innuendo, and he smiled.

 

\---

 

The evening had gone, well enough — fairly romantically. Will surmised from the tightness of Hannibal’s gestures that the steak and lobster weren’t up to par with Hannibal’s usual standards, but either way the progression of dinner to dessert to drinks had gotten them up the stairs and into bed, which had been the point all along. 

 

Still Hannibal hadn’t said much, which Will expected he could correct with a little prompting. Hannibal could never resist the opportunity to psychoanalyze his lover during sex.

 

“Y’know,” Will huffed, grinning lazily as Hannibal fingered him open, “I’m not appalled by  _ all  _ my dreams…”

 

“Oh no?” Hannibal didn’t look up.

 

“Well, I have nightmares...sometimes,” Will laughed self-deprecatingly at his own understatement. “You can do it, I’m ready.” 

 

Will ran the soft inside of his thigh in circles over Hannibal’s hipbone and spread his legs so Hannibal could see the eager twitch of the muscles he had worked open. “Sometimes though — mmmm…it’s sex dreams.”

 

“Oh yes?” Hannibal replied, his attention captured. His eyes flickered up, flinty and dark. He took Will, as it were, at his word, fitting the blunt tip of his cock against Will’s softened hole and pushing inside. As he sheathed himself he suppressed a groan, instead rasping: “Do you dream of Matthew Brown?” 

 

Will, who had been holding his breath to prepare for the thrust, deflated at Hannibal’s question and winced as Hannibal shoved in a touch too hastily. He blinked rapidly, searchingly, trying to understand Hannibal’s motivations for asking about Matthew Brown during sex.

 

He cleared his throat which felt sticky and unused, attempting to salvage whatever mood had been present before. Although, now, he realized the tightness of Hannibal’s movements earlier in the night might not have been entirely a product of Will’s abysmal culinary skills.

 

“Once — I — I had a dream from...from my memories of prison,” there was an odd clenching feeling in the pit of Will’s stomach. He wound his legs more securely around Hannibal’s hips and fidgeted in place until he felt a little better. Will did not mention how recently this dream had visited him. He licked his lips before continuing, “I guess Matthew was there at first, but...swimming like a mirage. I saw you — knew you — wanted you inside of me…” Will hiccuped around a poorly timed intake of air and pulled Hannibal as deep as he could to ward away the sterile smells of chlorine and unscented soap that began filling his sinuses unbidden.

 

A  _ memory:  _ there it was. The word resonated in Hannibal’s thoughts just as Will sheathed him fully, and pleasure melded with pain and became something new, startling, exquisite. 

 

“How did you give yourself to him, Will?” Hannibal probed. Some awful, burning pressure was building in him as his mind’s eye summoned possibilities: Had Will been on his knees, mouth wet and snug on Brown; had he bent at the waist pragmatically, hands fixed on concrete walls; had he laid down on his little prison cot like Leda over the mantle, spreading his perfect thighs and touching himself, that shy pink bud, soft in invitation…? “Tell me.”

 

Will braced his hand on the back of Hannibal’s head and shoved his head into the crook of Hannibal’s neck where finely maintained strands of greying hair tickled at the tip of Will’s nose. He was often amazed by the acuteness of Hannibal’s sense of smell, and got a taste of what it must be like when he smelled the extra heat and danger wafting — emanating from the tendon stretched tightly behind Hannibal’s jaw.

 

“...I don’t think that’s a good idea…” Will whispered timidly and licked at the shell of Hannibal’s ear. His hand traveled down to where their bodies met and he cradled the weight of Hannibal’s balls in the gentle hollow of his palm.

 

He couldn’t have signaled his submission any more clearly, Hannibal thought, if he had said the words  _ I surrender.  _ It stung him, somehow, though he couldn’t place why. Will’s body closed warmly around him and he moved in him as his mind raced further and further away.

 

“How did that wounded shoulder of yours bear it, being driven into that steel frame?” Whoever had treated Will when he had been shot in the line of duty down in New Orleans hadn’t followed through with physical therapy, or Will himself had refused it; either way his shoulder still ached, and his range of motion was ever so slightly limited. It occurred to Hannibal when he took Will on his back that he should bear to the opposite side, as though his mattress — as carefully curated and high quality as everything else in his home — were not enough to prevent the ache. 

 

Will took careful inventory of Hannibal’s body language. He coordinated his movements like a fighter might, bringing their bodies as close together as possible to limit Hannibal’s range of movement. However, it seemed that the more Will attempted to rein him in, the more Hannibal pushed back against him. It began to niggle at Will’s own set of grievances tucked neatly away in the back corner of his mind.

 

Hannibal’s acerbic line of questioning shook one of those grievances loose and Will saw Alana’s disgusted expression staring back at him while he was locked in one of the BSHCI observation cages — after she had learned who had sent Matthew Brown to take Hannibal’s life.

 

Remembering the layered betrayal he felt when he realized she and Hannibal had taken each other to bed, Will did not regret the softly sarcastic reply he gave Hannibal next, “I’ve done a lot of things with my fucked up shoulder...had a lot of things done to it. Think I’ve learned how to handle it.”

 

“How did he handle it?” Hannibal asked, and thrust with admittedly no intention of bearing away from Will’s longtime injury; “How did he handle  _ you?”  _

 

Will did his best to counter the force of Hannibal pinning him down to the mattress, but Hannibal always had the slight advantage in size and his position above Will gave him an added edge in the matter. It didn’t stop Will from thrashing and gathering his arms in front of him to push at Hannibal’s broad chest.

 

“Like a fucking chinadoll — jesus, Hannibal, get off of me!”

 

“How did he take you?” Hannibal demanded in a low, lethal hiss. He snatched Will’s wrists and forced them down on either side of him, already in the midst of losing what was left of his erection. 

 

On the surface, Will felt frightened, but deeper in his gut, a matching darkness poured out of him and locked horns with Hannibal’s sudden madness.

 

“Fuuuu — ah!” Will groaned at the torsion created by his elbow pushing upwards while his wrist and shoulder remained pinned. For a quick moment, the pain radiated outwards and branched through his nerves like a lightning bolt splintering through the sky. He hissed through his teeth and stilled himself as best he could before bucking up and knocking his skull against the dip between Hannibal’s forehead and nose. He punctuated his act of defiance by gathering as much saliva from his dry mouth as he could and spitting up towards Hannibal’s cheek. 

 

Most of the bubbled mess fell back on his own face, but it satisfied Will to see Hannibal so utterly enraged by the affront to his dignity.  “He fucked me like you fucked Alana,” he snarled and prepared himself mentally and physically for Hannibal’s rebuke. 

 

A wet drip streaked Will’s cheek. Will flinched. He wondered for a moment if it could be a tear; his heart beat erratically in his chest and he watched as Hannibal sat back, blood welling at the peak of his cupid’s bow. He was still for a tense moment, and Will shrank back unconsciously. But Hannibal simply pushed off, his soft cock slipping from Will’s body in one slick pull. 

 

Hannibal touched the trickle of blood draining down over his mouth, and regarded his fingertip with faint surprise.

 

Will grabbed his own shirt and balled it up before pulling Hannibal’s hand away from his face and pressing the bunched material up to stem the flow. Hannibal looked much younger, pinching at the bridge of his nose and grimacing when the action elicited more pain than it should have.

 

“Fuck, I didn’t mean to...I — sorry,” Will licked at his lips and shoved his face into the palm of his empty hand. It was the only way to stop the hand from shaking.

 

“You’ve broken it, I believe,” Hannibal said flatly. He didn’t clarify what  _ it  _ was.

 

_ \--- _

 

The next morning, Alana relented. 

 

“Fifteen minutes,” she warned, but gently, maternally. “That’s all I can do.” 

 

Hannibal thanked her graciously. “That’s all it will take.”

 

It was noon. She had turned off the recording equipment that usually monitored meetings between doctors and patients in the hospital, and had instructed the orderlies to stand out of earshot. Hannibal, she figured, knew well enough to stay a few paces removed from the bars of Brown’s cell.

 

Hannibal asked only for a chair, which a young orderly provided before excusing himself, leaving the doctor to survey his subject with a cool, clinical stare. 

 

Brown was lying outstretched on his prison cot, reading a cloth-bound book. When he caught sight of Hannibal, he sat up with a slowly spreading grin.

 

“Well, Dr. Lecter. What a surprise.”

 

He followed Hannibal’s gaze to the book in his lap. “At first I asked for psychology journals — you know, the kind you likely publish in,” he explained. “Dr. Bloom refused me; said it wouldn’t be healthy for any attempts I might make at recovery. They gave me history books, though,” Matthew screwed his lips up into a delighted smirk. He didn’t tell Hannibal about the amounts of hell he had had to stir up to earn the concession of books in the first place.

 

“Gotta admit; never thought I’d be seeing you around here,” Matthew narrowed his eyes and swung his legs down from his bed in that easy way of a haughty, young man. He set the heavy book down and pushed himself up to stand in the middle of the cell with his hands braced at his waist. No matter what Hannibal personally believed, there was no denying that Matthew was a predator too — by his own estimation a hawk — whose sharp eyes quickly trained on the blackened bridge of Hannibal’s nose. Matthew’s gaze flickered and he licked his lips.

 

“Where are my manners? I would invite you in,” he gestured at the end of his rusted prison cot, “but I don’t think you’ve ever fancied yourself on this side of the bars. Just fond of putting other people behind them,” he curled his tongue up in the hollow of his cheek and looked Hannibal up and down with icy blue eyes. They were so different from Will’s, yet insufferably similar.

 

“I’m glad you’ve been well,” Hannibal greeted him, folding neatly to sit, unbuttoning his jacket as he did. It frustrated him intensely to feel Brown’s gaze linger on his bruise. “A lover’s quarrel,” he explained generously, though his gaze remained tightly focused. 

 

“You’ve got quite a feisty lover,” Matthew chuckled and folded his hands behind his head. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” His well-defined eyebrows climbed up towards his hairline and he leaned in towards the metal bars separating the two of them. His body language showed he was trying to be intimidating.

 

“I believe you had him first,” Hannibal said crisply. A strange mischief sparkled in his eyes; inside he felt electrified, governed not by his cool, rational mind, but by that animal part of him that reveled in pain, even his own. “He was just reminiscing about you the other evening. How did you find him?”

 

“Say it ain’t so, Dr. Lecter. My Mr. Graham?” The caged former-orderly began leisurely pacing the length of his cell. He let out a few dramatic, put-upon sighs and looked as if he were about to say something before muttering  _ ‘no, no, no’ _ under his breath. Matthew would look Hannibal up and down each time he took these breaks in his pacing before dropping his head again to stalk back and forth behind the bars.

 

“I miss him. Mr. Graham,” he clarified unnecessarily. “Nobody is quite like him. Though, I guess you are as aware of that fact as I am,” Matthew shook his head forlornly and clicked his tongue against his teeth, “He’s special,” and the way Matthew said it — the way he stared deeply into Hannibal’s eyes — spoke to how genuinely he felt the things he was saying. Even though Matthew Brown’s voice always carried a stale layer of artifice with it, when he spoke of Will, his eyes communicated his devoted obsession.

 

Hannibal reminded himself that this was his power — this was his weapon. When he left this dismal concrete corridor he would very likely return home to spend the night in Will’s waiting arms, and Brown would be left to imagine the scant time they had spent in a rushed, fumbling encounter. 

 

“Will is unique,” Hannibal indulged him, “and in much better sorts these days. The food here didn’t suit him; he’s put a touch of meat back on, now. Of course,” Hannibal cocked his head, though his stare stayed fixed on Brown’s eyes, “he’s also much better fed.”

 

“You’re probably right,” Hannibal sensed the turn in tone before it even came. Being prepared for it did not stem the spike of hot anger that flashed in his core when Matthew spoke again: “Seems like his right hook is pretty strong.” He made a popping sound with his mouth that echoed off the cement walls and mimed the action of a punch off to his side.

 

“He is hard-headed,” Hannibal said, pleased to correct him. “You know Will. Or knew him. Only once, isn’t that right?” 

 

Matthew Brown’s smile never faded. It would have been disarming to any man other than Hannibal, but to Hannibal it was still annoying. “You’re upset, I can see. He’s been thinking about me and he lashed out at you.” His head nodded in fake contemplation, “But you don’t have to worry. I mean he’s out there with you, and I’m locked up tight in this cell. You remember this cell, don’t you? You visited Mr. Graham here many times. I wonder if they put me here intentionally, or if it was just my good luck.”

 

He did recall the cell. After all, he had counted on the layout of the hospital — the proximity of the enclosure to Chilton’s former office, for one — to advance the conclusion that Chilton had been on the hunt for someone to frame for the Chesapeake Ripper murders, be it an inmate or an orderly. The prosecution had made great use of his ready-made theory during Chilton’s trial. He wondered how it would factor into Brown’s. 

 

“How did Will smell to you?” he asked impulsively. “They have of course changed the linens. But something lingers, doesn’t it?” 

 

“Oh, that’s reserved for daydreams, Dr. Lecter,” Matthew spared a glance at the cot against the wall. “Sometimes I wonder about the physics of it all. I mean, I’ve found it’s hardly enough room for me to sleep on let alone, you know…”

 

“If you don’t recall, you’ve made rather poor use of your memory, Matthew,” Hannibal chided lightly. His eyes scanned the length of the cot. “You had him lying down,” he concluded.

 

“Pushed with his back against the wall at first, then lying down. I wanted to see him stretched out in front of me...the length of his neck, the spread of his thighs — he stayed soft there...filled out.” The way Matthew mused was lyrical. Clearly a pleasant memory; Will had laid down for him sweetly. 

 

Hannibal, meanwhile, let the scene form in his mind. 

 

“How did you find his orgasm?” Hannibal asked. Though his tone remained conversational his eyes flashed dangerously. “Will’s are rather fascinating. Most men’s last around twenty-one seconds. His are up to three times longer.” Hannibal absently adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “It’s why he finds himself so out of sorts afterward.” 

 

“Didn’t really stop to time it. Just eased him through…” Matthew maintained an effortless, flowing defense knowing that it would serve him best to conserve more biting comments for later.

 

“You found he needed soothing?”

 

“He’s a nervous kind of guy.”

 

“Typically  _ not  _ while he’s enjoying himself. Rather the only exception, in fact.”

 

“You got me —” Matthew suddenly spread his hands out in the air and his eyes popped a madly vibrant shade of blue, “— you won this round. Does it make you feel better?” He chuckled and crossed his arms in front of himself.

 

“You have the sense I didn’t feel well already,” Hannibal countered, “why?”

 

“Well, you’re here. You’re the Chesapeake Ripper — glad Dr. Bloom had the surveillance equipment downgraded — that could have been a real uh-oh since, you know...Dr. Chilton’s takin’ the heat,” Matthew wiggled his eyebrows playfully. “Had you been so worried about me before, you would have killed me ages ago. But you’re here specifically because of something Mr. Graham said...some way he made you feel. And trust me, I know how that is,” he patted his chest over his heart, “he makes you feeeeeeel — transcendent.”

 

_ Transcendent.  _ Hannibal tasted the word like bitter metal on his lips and swore silently to himself he would never use it again.

 

“He brought up your trial while we were making love,” he said simply. “He’ll be testifying against you, of course.”

 

“Of course,” his head bobbed as he resumed pacing again. “It’s alright. I’m pleading guilty — saying I’m the Chesapeake Ripper. You don’t mind, do you? It’s a good way to go. They already have Dr. Chilton. They’ll just chalk it up to me being a few  _ cents _ short of a dollar.”

 

“Be my guest,” Hannibal invited him, “you will be one of several pretenders to the title. How will you  _ feel  _ when Will denies your night of passion in a court of law?”

 

He wasn’t sure how he himself would feel.

 

“Can’t see it coming up during the trial. Or are you talking about the trial you’re putting him through?”

 

“He has already pled guilty, I’m afraid,” Hannibal admitted. “What did he call you?” 

 

“Lover,” it was a lie Matthew could not avoid telling just to dig his fingers into Hannibal’s fresh wounds.

 

“Unusual choice of word for a poor boy brought up on the bayou,” Hannibal retorted, cocking his head to the side with a cruel smirk. He had read what was known of Brown’s history in his casefile; apparently he had come from somewhere around Boulder, where he had been diagnosed with a laundry list of mental illnesses at a young age. Violent behavior had him expelled from school, and with an alcoholic mother and no known father, he had been caught selling oral sex to men at bus stops in Denver sometime in the last six years. “I had imagined something more prosaic.  _ Matt,  _ perhaps.” 

 

“Perhaps,” Matthew allowed. “But let me play the psychiatrist and you can be my patient. Mr. Lecter — you get it...because you’re not the doctor in this scenario —” Matthew cleared his throat dramatically and painted a concerned expression on his face. “Mr. Lecter, why exactly did you go to visit your lover’s former lover?” When Hannibal did not immediately respond, Matthew made a rolling gesture with his hand and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

 

“I wanted to commit your experience of Will to my own memory before you died,” Hannibal supplied in time with an air of patient generosity. “For posterity’s sake.” 

 

“Well if you really want to get an idea of the full experience — I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Hannibal did not have the opportunity to stop Matthew as he popped the buttons of his prison jumpsuit open and pulled his genitalia out from beneath the waistband of his white briefs to display. He held his arms spread out as he had at the pool and looked down at himself while he leaned in conspiratorially close to Hannibal. “Mr. Graham likes a big cock inside him...cozying up with his magic button. Didn’t even get the chance to jerk him before he came.”

 

Hannibal’s fingers flexed and his knuckles whitened but his gaze remained steady, level. It took effort. This wasn’t the first display of utter madness he had ever witnessed — they were rather common in his line of work — but this was the first that had tempted the part of him that was similarly disturbed to respond in kind.

 

He refrained. 

 

“Why don’t you dress yourself, Matthew?” he asked in that monotonous therapeutic tone. The display was vulgar, almost animal, and worse, he couldn’t look away. 

 

There it was, the instrument of Will’s pleasure: a pale stamen hanging over a thatch of black hair, half-engorged, with a little dew gathering at the florid tip. He didn’t match Hannibal in size, but his body was leaner and younger, and the simple dominance of a larger member didn’t comfort Hannibal. It struck him as base.

 

He stood, disgusted, and slid his hand quite naturally into his coat pocket, where he had stowed a slender silver pin, barely noticeable in the palm of his hand, much less so on whatever camera may have still been actively surveilling them. He laid his hand against one of the bars of Matthew’s enclosure as in a gesture of friendly pity, letting the pin fall soundlessly to the concrete floor just inside.

 

“I must say I can’t see what all the fuss was about,” he offered simply, “but perhaps  _ Mr. Graham  _ will enlighten me some other time. Thank you, Matthew.”

 

His shoes echoed dully in the corridor, lacquered leather wingtips catching the light of windows dimmed by metal grates. He was unhurried, but he now had the sense there was much to do in very little time.

 

\---

 

Will had thought all day about how to smooth things over. He had settled on dinner. Better left to the professionals this time, he had decided. 

 

He hadn’t hesitated to drop the good doctor’s name at one of those unfathomably expensive New-American Baltimore bistros he favored. Normally the restaurant didn’t do take-out, not under any conditions; in this case, though, they made an exception: Dr. Lecter’s business was simply that valuable. Of course the maitre’d had eyed Will skeptically. He didn’t seem like the sort of  _ colleague  _ the stately psychiatrist would send along to do his bidding, but he was insistent, and she had at last grudgingly agreed to have crispy duck confit and smoked pear marmalade wrapped up along with a  _ sous vide  _ pork belly marinated in thyme and a Beaujolais-maple sauce. 

 

Dessert, she said, they would have to see to themselves: Not a single one of their delicate pastries was without some frozen component that couldn’t last the drive home. Will had rolled his eyes; Hannibal didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, anyway.

 

Hannibal was already at home when Will arrived, working, as luck would have it, on an olive oil and blood orange ice cream. Will placed the takeout bags on the counter and carefully sidled up behind him, playfully tugging the bow of his apron. 

 

“Smells good,” he offered gently.

 

“It’s subtle,” Hannibal returned. Will caught the shade of his injury in a brief glimpse of his profile. 

 

Hannibal even wore a bruise well, Will thought. 

 

_ What a fucking character.  _

 

“We’re in luck. Bannock had everything but dessert.” 

 

Despite himself, Hannibal smiled. 

 

“Bannock, hm? You must’ve gone rather out of your way.”

 

“Not a problem.”

 

“Did you order anything for yourself?”

 

“Yeah, the duck thing.”

 

“The confit.”

 

“What you ordered me last time.”

 

“You enjoyed that?”

 

“I enjoy everything you do for me.” Not quite, of course, but Will was in the mood to make peace. “In any case, I gather that cooking dinner is not my forte. But I can still make gestures.”

 

Will removed each box, container, and bundle from the bag. He considered reheating the items himself because the dishes had grown tepid during his drive over, but reconsidered knowing that Hannibal would be especially crestfallen if Will managed to ruin restaurant-quality food. Instead he unwrapped everything and waited for Hannibal to address each item.

 

“You’re home early,” Will ventured as he washed his hands and went to the cupboard to select a wine for dinner.

 

“My last appointment was short,” Hannibal announced cryptically. Short, yes, but thick enough, he thought, and rosy with youth. He turned the oven on and separated what Will had picked up to heat each component properly. Behind him the ice cream machine churned quietly. “How was your day, dear?” 

 

“Mercifully slow. Jack, Bev, and even Brian are deposed in court. Jimmy was the only supervisor at the lab today and I only had one morning class. Caught up on some paperwork Jack has been bothering me for — it’s mostly preparing curriculum for next year. You?” Will uncorked a Riesling and poured each of them a glass, settling the bottle into a marble chiller when he had finished. 

 

“Mm,” Hannibal took up his glass as he rose from loading their food into the oven, “salut.” 

 

The glasses clinked. 

 

“Salut,” Will hummed.

 

“Tell me,” Hannibal said, leaning back against the countertop and finally leveling his feline gaze at Will. “And I don’t mean to intrude, but — indulge me. What  _ was  _ it about Brown? I remember him being a very well-built young man.”

 

Will immediately clammed up. He finished half of his wine glass in one sip and leveled Hannibal with a reasonably hurt look. “I — I thought we were done — we were done with this,” Will stuttered in a swiftly building rage.

 

“You’re a young man yourself,” Hannibal went on, as though he hadn’t registered Will’s response. “It would be difficult to begrudge you a taste for your own peers or better. If we’re honest with one another, perhaps we can arrange something…” 

 

“You know,” Will started with a bitter half-chuckle, “I’m not about to listen to all this jealous fucking bullshit from you when you were screwing Alana while I was shut up in prison — a place where you put me! It’s bullshit...”

 

“It was for your betterment, Will. And you  _ are  _ better now. If there was something you needed in him, perhaps we could —”

 

“I need you, Hannibal. I need you to just fucking drop it and move on —”

 

“—And Alana, by the way, was  _ necessary.  _ My intention was always for you and I —”

 

“—Yeah?! If you wanted me so much, why didn’t you fuck me  _ before  _ you threw me in prison?” 

 

“You weren’t ready, Will. I would have had to force you.” 

 

Will shook his head in disbelief and pointed accusingly at Hannibal, “But you did, didn’t you?” His tone weakened and he sniffed a few times causing his voice to crack when he spoke again, “...you did, because — because Alana may not have meant anything to you, but you both meant everything to me…”

 

Hannibal softened at once, prone as his predator’s heart was to sudden whims. Of course, he thought then, of course Will had sought out some sort of revenge, and then a little shred of comfort. Presently his fury directed itself fully toward Brown, who he decided, quite in that instant, had taken advantage of Will’s delicate condition.

 

“I am sorry, Will,” he said after a long moment, lowering his eyes in an almost sheepish gesture. “There were — unforeseen consequences.” A beat of silence, and then: “Please, come here.”

 

Will hesitated when Hannibal beckoned him closer. Instead he took a more judicious sip of wine and rubbed the tension out of his temples with his empty hand. “You don’t have to be sorry. You just have to let it be.”

 

“I will after this evening,” Hannibal promised, not insincerely, “come here.”

 

At first, Will thought Hannibal’s concession was meant to be sincere; that he was counting their immediate discussion as the final chapter in this strange argument about fidelity. But Will had spent enough time around Hannibal to read his slight variations in tone. The matter was not closed. “What’s happening this evening, Hannibal?”

 

“I’m afraid Matthew and I have an appointment,” Hannibal said, turning back to the oven as the scent of warm duck confit reached him. 

 

The vague and absurd comment made Will lose his appetite. His fingers curled tighter around the stem of his glass. He closed his eyes as if it would protect him from the answers he feared Hannibal would provide to his next two questions: “Where did you go today? What did you do?”

 

“He and I spoke briefly at his cell,” Hannibal admitted, “not unlike you and I did once. I understand we will be finishing our conversation later this evening. It won’t be any imposition on you, Will, I promise.” 

 

“This better be one of your more tasteless jokes, Hannibal,” Will warned. “I swear to god — someone’s gonna get hurt —”

 

“Not you, Will.” 

 

“Knowing the two of you, someone’s already gotten hurt. For fuck’s sake!” Will threw his hands up abortively. “I’m going to clean up this mess once and for all. Don’t follow me.”

 

Will left his glass on the counter and stormed off to grab his things from the front entryway.

 

“I mean it,” he shouted behind him as he opened the door, “you’ve already done enough.”

  
In the driveway he thought he heard a crash of some kind; it could have been his blood pounding in his ears, or the roar of a blustery spring wind. He didn’t stop to find out which it was. 


End file.
